Sunday, December 07, 2014

Celebrating Bedford Ceramic

Bedford Ceramic Urinal (Artist Unknown)
The BBC new magazine has published this month an article titled: A Point of View: Has modern art exhausted its power to shock?

It is a question that is not unlike one I heard from a semiotician who in 2011,  inquired in an online forum we both inhabited, “Why is modern art so boring?"(Decoding the Now)

 The BBC article is well worth the read, however, one fact I find slightly irritable is the continued reference of a certain Bedford Ceramic Urinal as "Marcel Duchamp's artwork "Fountain".

If you're not familiar with the story, Duchamp signed a urinal with a nom d'art ("R.Mutt") and then submitted it for a group show as his own work.  Newly titled 'Fountain', the work was rejected by the committee, but today it lives on as 'a major landmark in 20th-century art'.

Some of you are no doubt thinking, 'bullsh*t', while some of you are thinking, 'well, of course it is'. My own opinion accommodates both perceptions as valid.

No doubt, it is someone’s urinal, as it was certainly commissioned, designed and manufactured by one or several real human beings some hundred hears ago. Let this fact resonate a moment, because once you do, it becomes plainly evident that the fact that Duchamp signed the object does not make it his object, except, perhaps, to those who regard creation and appropriation or re-contexualization with an intellectually weighted form of equivalency.

And yet that's exactly what countless art critics and historians have done for the last century -allowed a man who signed his name to another artist's work take full credit for that work.

If Duchamp may be called a genius, he is a genius akin to P.T. Barnum, another famous huckster who often created nothing and became celebrated for it.

Others may disagree but I can never believe that the man who draws a moustache on the Mona Lisa is as fully a talent as the man who painted the Mona Lisa, no matter how amusing or provoking the result.

Nevertheless,  Duchamp turns out to be a man ahead of his time, and in this regard a predecessor to Warhol. But Andy was also actually was an artist, albeit one acutely aware of and obsessed with both industrial design and popular culture.

And Andy, of course, pulled the same stunt with 'his' Brillo Boxes as Duchamp did with 'Fountain' –identified another person's design as art, and then signed his own name to the thing.

If nothing else, we can say that Duchamp was pre-Kardashian, if we may suggest such a thing is a valid concept. But of course we can, because with 'Fountain', Duchamp showed us that all one needed to call ownership out of absence was simply to indicate a relational concept between one's self and another object.

But here is the thing: if the urinal is indeed the work of art that Duchamp says it is, –and I think it is–, then the fact that Duchamp tagged it does not make him the artist, or even an artist. If we are generous, we might identify him as a curator with a puckish sense of humor, and not a vandal who defaced and possibly stolen a urinal.

To believe and argue otherwise is to suggest that bridges, tunnels, trains and walls might be identified by any graffiti artist who scrawls his or her handle on it, rather than, you know, the actual architect.

Do we really believe that artistry is all in the concept, and that original execution is so meaningless that it has no contemporary value?

Okay, well, so, as it happens, I will be in London this spring, kindly note that upon my departure the London Bridge shall thereafter be known as 'The Terry O’Gara Bridge', as I shall be painting my name upon the thing before leaving. 

Hey, acrylic makes it real!

All joking aside, isn't there anyone who will stand up for the real artist who created 'Fountain’?

No, not Duchamp, he was just a prankster and a tagger with a magic marker.

Perhaps, a hundred long years later, we should stop laughing, –no, I mean really stop laughing– and instead, we might inquire who is the actual designer of the object?

To date, his or her or their name appears to be lost to history, but I suspect that a determined journalist might consult the historical archives belonging to one Bedford Ceramic Urinal Manufacturer and thereby rectify a now century-old wrong.

Monday, December 01, 2014

SOUND OF THE YEAR: 2014 – SWEDISH POP

Swedish Global Pop Star Robyn
First, let's rewind:

In 2013 Swedish songwriters and producers had a hand in 34 US top ten hits  and 32 UK top ten hits.

Then, by the year's end, ABBA’s greatest hits album, 'Gold', released in 1992,  surpassed ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ sales, released in 1967, on The Beatles’ own home turf.

Now, a year later, there is still no sign that global youth culture is growing weary of the Swedish sound.

Of course, the European airwaves have for many years now been saturated with Scandinavian hits, especially in the summer. So, it's not as though this music or the talent behind it just exploded on the scene; more accurately it simply took a few decades to entrench itself into the rhythm of American life.

Indeed, in a recent issue of The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones illuminates that magazine’s readers of the Swedish invasion by asking, “Do you like Swedish pop music? The answer is probably yes, even if you can’t name a single artist born in Sweden.” (The Sound of Sweden)

That’s because evidence of Swedish pop machinations are everywhere, although all of it is easily missed if you don’t know where to look. But dig into the liner notes and you’ll realize that a significant portion of hit songs streaming off that other significant Swedish musical import, SPOTIFY, has as either its origin or primary influence, the aesthetic sensibilities cultivated by a small collection of prolific Stockholm based music producers and songwriters.

 Meanwhile, in other news, and across the world:


Clearly, if the year's top stories are any indication, music may no longer be a catalyst for social change, but it still provides respite from the world's woes and the pressure of daily life.

So how did Sweden come to dominate the zeitgeist? 

In a nutshell: The Beatles broke up; Motown lost ground; Kraftwerk released Autobahn; Blondie got signed; hair bands happened; Kurt Cobain died; the Backstreet Boys had a hit, and the rest is history.

Of course, the last half century of widespread public support and encouragement of music education in the Swedish school system has played no small role as well:

“Sweden actively encourages prospective musicians through its education system... By the time they start school at age seven, kids have learned a great deal about singing and rhythm. Furthermore, many Swedes join choir groups in their teens, regardless of gender or religious affiliation. Sweden boasts the highest number of choirs per capita in the world - a startling 15 percent of Swedes sing in choirs.”  (Why Swedish pop is the best in the world)

In other words, what other countries have done by bolstering educational programs associated with science, technology, engineering, programming and mathematics, Sweden has done with piano lessons, choral groups, contagious melodies and danceable loops.

Fast forward to the present and Stockholm’s Max Martin has now produced more number-one songs than anyone besides Beatles' producer and collaborator, George Martin. And it's certainly no secret to pop fans that the Swedish producer's superlative sonic craftsmanship is one reason why Taylor Swift’s '1989' is the much ballyhooed first certified platinum album of the year. In fact, with the No. 1 debut of Taylor Swift's 'Shake It Off', Max Martin earned his 18th number one hit, placing him in third place among writers with the most leaders in the Billboard Hot 100's 56-year history.

Other artists inspired in recent years by Stockholm’s sonic artisans include a Who's Who of MTV stars, among them:

One Direction, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Mylène Farmer, Usher, The Backstreet Boys, Pitbull, Madonna, Maroon 5, Bon Jovi, Jennifer Lopez,  Enrique Iglesias, Kelly Clarkson,  Gavin De Graw, Pink, Justin Beiber, Ke$ha, Cyndi Lauper, Daughtry, Ariana Grande and Shakira, to name but a few.

One might even suggest that these entertainers are not simply fans of the Swedish Pop Mafia, but dues paying members of it, or that Stockholm's songwriters are so successful because they are not so much intent on writing pop songs as they are implanting ear worms.

America’s own popular power pop producer, Dr. Luke, who has more than than thirty Top Ten credits to his name, culled in the last decade alone, is himself a disciple of the Swedish pop maestro, Martin. 

As a result, it's quite likely that whether the song is sung by Avril Lavigne at the Budokan or Katy Perry on the beaches of Brooklyn, or whether it was recorded and composed in London or Los Angeles, or by a Nord or a New Yorker, no matter, if it's currently at the top of the 2014 pop charts, then its musical DNA can probably be traced back to Stockholm.

Still not convinced in the power of Swedish Pop? Consider this:

  • 1 Billion in pop music sales
  • Global radio domination
  • The reigning music influence on mainstream popular culture
  • The first platinum selling album of the year

Love it or hate it, it's hard to argue with a hit, much less hundreds of them.

–And that’s why The 2014 Critical Noise Sound of the Year belongs to the ubiquitous sound of SWEDISH POP.

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HOW THE SOUND OF THE YEAR IS SELECTED:

The Critical Noise Sound of the Year goes to that sound source, event, entity, happening or concept which so effectively produces wide response and reaction, whether intentional or not, such that it stirs collective emotion, inspires discussion, incites action, or otherwise lends itself to cultural analysis and resonates across the globe.

Prior Sound of the Year winners include Pussy Riot (2012), The Cry for Freedom (2011), The Vuvuzela (2010) and Auto-Tune (2009)